Smoking more than doubles your risk of mental illness: new studyBy Marc Lallanilla
Published Sep. 11, 2023
It’s no secret that smoking cigarettes can ruin your body.
The list of illnesses that smoking causes — heart disease, stroke, diabetes, emphysema, bronchitis and several types of cancer — is long and troubling.
However, most people don’t realize that smoking is also associated with mental illness.
In recent years, studies have suggested that there’s a strong link between the two.
But researchers haven’t been able to decide whether smoking causes mental disorders, or if individuals who already have a mental disorder smoke to ease their symptoms.
Now, researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark believe they’ve proven that smoking is a cause of mental illnesses like depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
“The numbers speak for themselves — smoking does cause mental illness,” Dr. Doug Speed, statistical geneticist at Aarhus University’s Center for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics, said in a statement.
“Although it’s not the only cause, smoking increases the risk of being hospitalized with a mental illness by 250%,” Speed added.
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2023/09/11/smoking-more-than-doubles-your-risk-of-mental-illness/